The Meaning of Life
by WritingxEqualsxHappiness
Summary: More than one life hangs in the balance now. Set sometime after the Chase/Cameron marriage. All is explained as you read!
1. Chapter 1

**Boy, has it been a long time since I've written a story for fanfiction. I just recently got trapped by House, M.D. and it's now one of my favorite shows. I'm riding an awesome splurge of sudden inspiration and this was an idea I got when the power went out at the end of an old episode on my dvr. I don't usually write fanfiction unless the idea is this awesome, and I hope you like it! Hopefully I've returned to the fanfiction world with an explosion!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own House, M.D. or anything related to it.**

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The Meaning of Life

"I'm scared," she whispered. It was the first chance she'd gotten to tell him that, to tell him anything as a matter of fact. The whole day had been a blur of people and movement and noise and no one had paid much attention to how _she_ was feeling. It was all about getting things done and Chase had been a large portion of that hurrying force.

"Don't be," he told her, almost dismissively. He wasn't paying her the attention she deserved, even now, when they were wheeling her bed to the operating room so she could be knocked out.

Cameron felt her frustration rise in her yet again and she grabbed the front of his light blue scrubs and yanked his face closer to her. Chase stumbled and was about to ask his wife what the hell she did that for when he caught sight of her and wisely kept his mouth shut.

"Stop, for one damn second, and _listen to what I am telling you_," she said angrily. She was pleased when his eyes widened minutely and he really focused on her for the first time that day. "I have preeclampsia. I have been afraid for my life and for this baby's life all day and you haven't done a single thing to make me feel any better. I'm about to be knocked out and cut open and all you've been doing is running around instead of being with me, which is where you should have been. This is _our_ baby. _Our_ baby is about to be delivered eleven weeks prematurely and could die. I could die, too."

"That won't happen," Chase said with a sudden fierceness that surprised Cameron. "I'll be scrubbing in to make sure they do everything right."

"No," she whispered. "Stay with me. Please."

"I will be with you," he said, his eyebrows scrunching together just the tiniest bit in his confusion.

"No, you won't," Cameron insisted. They were entering the elevator now, the doors sliding closed behind the bed she lay in. "You'll be staring over everyone's shoulders. I want you sitting next to me, holding my hand. It's where you're supposed to be, where any other father would be sitting."

Chase's expression softened as the elevator doors opened to the sterile hallway they had long grown accustomed to walking through. It was different now, though, when Cameron would be the one under the scalpel instead of the one holding it.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I've been ignoring you all day and I wasn't even home for most of yesterday."

Cameron smiled softly, releasing his scrubs and sliding her hand up to the side of his neck. "I'm scared," she whispered again.

"It'll be okay," Chase said tenderly. "I'll be right next to you when you fall asleep and when you wake up. It'll all be worth it when we can finally see him."

"Or her," Cameron corrected automatically. She let her hand fall back to her side once they entered the OR so she could wriggle her way onto the table. It didn't really hit her until then how crappy she felt. She was dizzy and her heart felt like it was thudding irregularly, though the beeping monitors told her otherwise. She lay back on the table and stuck her arms out sideways on the extensions. Chase stood to the side, knowing that the nurses and anesthesiologists had to work quickly.

As soon as there was a wide enough gap between nurses, he squeezed through and sat on the stool next to his wife's head. He watched silently as the anesthesiologist emptied a syringe into her IV line, a nurse reattached a blood pressure cuff above her elbow, and two more unfolded the dark blue sheets to drape over Cameron's chest and clip to the two poles on either side of her arms.

Cameron tilted her head back to look at Chase. He was watching everything with a strange silence. It looked to her like the calm before the storm. She knew what it would take him to sit next to her behind the curtain. She was surprised he wasn't already cracking his knuckles and bouncing his legs. She reached her free hand back and he smiled slightly as he gave her his hand.

Chase moved the stool closer to her head and pressed a sweet kiss to her trembling lips.

"It's okay," he murmured in her ear. He gave her another kiss, squeezed her hand, and then the anesthesiologist put the mask over her mouth and nose. They told her to count backwards from one hundred, but she knew that trick and she only needed to look into Chase's eyes to be distracted. She was aware that the sterilizing iodine sponge was stroking across her belly and then she was out.

Chase watched her eyes slip shut. The anesthesiologist intubated her and then the first incision was made. He wanted to badly to get up and see what was going on on the other side of the dark blue curtain, but he'd promised Cameron that he would stay by her side the whole time. He monitored her blood pressure on the monitor instead. It was dangerously high at one-sixty over ninety-five and fluctuated around that level. It was remarkable that she'd managed to stay conscious for as long as she had.

The wait for the baby to be delivered was a long one. Chase's legs were bouncing and he was cracking the knuckles of his right hand on his leg while the other hand rested gently on top of Cameron's warm forehead. Then the operating doctor's conversation alerted him to the fact that the baby had just been removed from the uterus.

Chase leapt to his feet, keeping his one hand on his wife's forehead. He'd known that the baby would be small and he'd seen exactly how small it would be from his shifts in the NICU, but this tiny body covered in blood and amniotic fluid surely couldn't be _his_ baby.

"It's a boy," the doctor announced quietly as he cut the umbilical cord and placed the baby into the waiting warm blankets of a nurse. Chase didn't watch what happened after that, because his eyes were drawn like magnets to the baby—his son. Whenever his tiny body was completely covered by the blankets, Chase's heart seemed to stop until he could see any part of his son's body again.

He watched as the NICU nurses cleaned him off and held a small oxygen tube in front of his mouth and nose, which seemed to be constantly suctioned. It was a miracle that the baby's lungs were functioning at twenty-nine and a half weeks gestation.

Chase remained standing while his son was weighed and measured. Three pounds and two ounces and eleven inches long. They wrapped him up in blankets and carried him over to Chase just long enough so that a tender kiss could be pressed to his small forehead, and then they put him inside the incubator and wheeled it away to the NICU, where he would be spending the first weeks of his life.

Chase stared after the nurses until the doors had closed and he could no longer see the, through the windows. He sat back down on the stool next to Cameron's sleeping body and placed a kiss on her forehead, too. He sighed shakily and jumped a little when a drop of salty wetness landed on his cheekbone. He didn't even realize that he'd been crying. He wiped at his eyes and then looked back up at the blood pressure monitor. Cameron's blood pressure was now just a tiny bit above what was normal. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of his chest.

Just as he'd promised Cameron before she'd gone to sleep, Chase followed her bed out of the operating room after she'd been closed up and cleaned up. They took her to Recovery and he sat in the chair next to her bed, watching her chest rise and fall, until he noticed movement behind her eyelids. He moved closer to her and stroked his thumb across the back of her hand as her eyes finally opened and half-focused on the general direction of his face.

"Hey," he said softly. "You're okay now."

Cameron closed her eyes and a smile flitted across her face.

"The baby's fine," Chase continued after a little while, when he knew she was aware enough to comprehend what he was telling her. "He's in the NICU right now. The doctors said his lungs are almost fully developed. If he gains weight fast, we can take him home in about a month and a half. He's three pounds and two ounces and eleven inches long."

"Big," Cameron mumbled, opening her eyes fully. "A boy?"

Chase murmured his affirmation. "What do you want to name him?" he asked gently.

"Samuel Robert Chase," she whispered instantly. "We can call him Sam."

"You don't want to give him a different middle name?" Chase asked with a quiet laugh.

"I like your name," she insisted.

Two hours later, a nurse was pushing Cameron in a wheelchair while Chase walked beside her to the NICU. Chase could see in the way she was sitting that she was in a lot of pain, but he was lucky to have held her off for two hours.

Cameron was craning her neck to see her baby as they approached the incubator at the end of the long room. The nurse let Chase push her the rest of the way to the incubator and then she set her eyes on the most beautiful baby boy she'd ever seen. He was bigger than she'd envisioned and she was glad for that. The wires and tubes were daunting, but as a doctor she knew that they were saving her son's life.

Cameron carefully leaned forward in her wheelchair and reached her hand through one of the holes in the side of the incubator to gently touch his tiny fingers with one of hers. She smiled widely when Sam's fingers moved in reaction to her touch and looked back at Chase, who was watching her with a loving smile gracing his face.

He'd been right. It was all worth it.

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**So? How was it? A little different, but I think I got the emotions down right. Thanks for reading and leave a review please!**


	2. Chapter 2

**As if that first chapter wasn't enough, here's some more! This is the same day but from House's perspective. I hope you like it!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own House, M.D. or anything associated with it.**

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Gregory House was in probably the best mood he'd experienced since the days before he was considered a cripple. He limped down the hallways to his office with a neutral expression on his face, neither overtly annoyed nor grinning maniacally.

He'd just left Cuddy's office with her promise to make a sincere effort to go out to dinner with him as soon as she found a new babysitter for Rachel. The last one had turned tail and run when she found out that Cuddy had been involved in a few gun incidents at the hospital, followed by that building collapse. House had told Cuddy that the immature teenager just couldn't handle getting a toddler to its grandparents' house. Granted, he wouldn't have liked doing that so much either.

He went into his office and flumped into his comfortable chair in the corner, not sparing a glance into the room next door which contained his infamous white board and diagnostic team.

House was in a precarious situation. He wanted to cling desperately to everything that made him House—the inappropriate comments, the unending bad mood—but in recent weeks his sensitive side had been fighting harder to come out. He had been shaken to the core by Hannah's death and it had made him really step back and take a look at his life. One fact stood out more than the rest: he was old and unhappy. He was unmarried and although his team didn't dislike him, they didn't exactly love him either. When he died, no one would be able to give proof of how deeply he cared for people. Caring about people was the whole reason he became a doctor, wasn't it? It was why he went to rehab for his vicodin addiction and why he put himself in the mental hospital. There would be no reason for living if he didn't go to work every day to save peoples' lives.

House sighed deeply and rubbed his hand over his face. He glanced into the room where they determined patients' fates and did a double take when he noticed that it was completely empty. There weren't even any lab coats on the backs of chairs to signify that anyone had been in that room at all today.

House went through the door and looked into the coffee pot. Day old coffee grounds. He stood up straight and rifled through his mental calendar. He didn't remember any important holidays or medical events. It definitely was not like his team to completely desert him like this. He looked down at his watch. It was well after lunch.

Moving as quickly as he could, House headed for Wilson's office, which was empty as well, and then Cuddy's office. He hadn't noticed anything wrong with how she was acting when he'd visited her just minutes ago, but maybe in his alien happiness he'd missed something.

"Where's my team?" he asked as soon as his head was through the door far enough that she could hear him. Cuddy placed the file she'd been going through onto the desk in front of her and stared at him for a minute.

"No one told you?" she asked in slight disbelief.

"Obviously I wouldn't be here if they had," House pointed out sardonically.

"Doctor Cameron was admitted to the ER early this morning because Chase couldn't wake her up," Cuddy told him, examining his face closely for any signs of concern. "You do know she was pregnant, right?"

"I'd heard there was a mini Chase in the baking."

"Yeah, well, she has preeclampsia," Cuddy said. "Her blood pressure was high enough that she must have fainted at some point." She glanced at her watch. "They're probably delivering the baby by now."

She watched House stare at a point just above her head for a second and then he had pulled his head back and she saw him making his way towards the OR rooms. She looked after him, dumbfounded, for a while and then checked her cell phone again for any messages regarding Cameron or the baby. Twenty-nine weeks was starting to push it.

House might have knocked a few interns aside as he rushed past, but _he_ got to the viewing room in one piece. He ordered the two residents who had been watching out and stood by himself in the middle of the long window. He couldn't see much behind the dark blue curtain and was sure that he was looking into the wrong room until he noticed Chase's hair bobbing up and down behind it. That must have been Cameron on the table, then. He wouldn't have been able to tell from where he stood. Most bloody bodies looked the same.

And, my God, was that her blood pressure? House squinted to see the numbers on the monitor and a strange but not unfamiliar jolt rushed through his body from his stomach. He sat down heavily in the chair closest to the window to watch the operating party closely. The first incision had already been made and it looked from where he was sitting that the doctor was just cutting into the uterus. He didn't remember how many weeks Cameron had reached and unconsciously held his breath until a tiny human-looking thing popped out into a nurse's waiting hands. It was a boy.

House watched as Chase leapt to his feet from behind the curtain and followed the baby's journey all the way to the other side of the room, where the neonatal doctors were standing around a much smaller table. Chase's eyes were shiny and House looked away, feeling a little embarrassed by his colleague's obvious love for that boy. It scared him, too, that he was jealous.

The viewing room door opened suddenly and House jumped in his seat, prepared to yell at this intruder, but it was only Wilson so he said nothing and went back to looking out the window at the doctor already closing Cameron's incision.

"It's a boy," Wilson said quietly.

"I know," House told him.

Wilson stood by the door in silence for a while.

"I've decided that I don't want to be forgotten," House announced at last. "I'm sorry."

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**I couldn't resist! Unfortunately, this seems to be the last of my ideas for any show, book, or movie for a while. If I have a great idea, I'll write it, but I generally try my hardest to stay away from writing fanfiction. Not that it's a bad thing, or anything, but at this point I'm still trying to focus a lot more on my own personal writing.**

**Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought of this!**


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